Associate Professor
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna
I am an observational astronomer based in Bologna, Italy. I use JWST and other large telescopes to study the formation and evolution of galaxies. My research is funded by an ERC grant.
I grew up in Italy and went to the University of Bologna as an undergraduate student. After doing my PhD at the California Institute of Technology (USA), I was a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (Germany), and a Clay Fellow at Harvard & Smithsonian | Center for Astrophysics (USA). I moved back to Bologna as a faculty member in 2022.
I study the physical properties of high-redshift galaxies, and I am particularly interested in understanding the quenching of star formation and the evolution of the first massive quiescent systems. My research is based on a combination of optical, near-infrared, and submillimeter observations.
I am the principal investigator of the Blue Jay survey, a James Webb Space Telescope program executed in Cycle 1. Blue Jay obtained deep spectra for 150 galaxies at 1.7 < z < 3.5, allowing us to study in detail both gas and stars in galaxies at the key epoch of Cosmic Noon. Learn more here.
I am the recipient of a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). My research program, starting in 2023, is called Red Cardinal and aims at discovering the physical processes behind galaxy quenching.
Below is a selection of recent articles, from the last five years. In the ADS you can find a list of all my publications and a list of my first-author publications.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5615-6018